


"She is more human than I am": a discussion of the Auronar and alienness (meta)

by aralias



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Aliens, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-13 00:11:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5687020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/pseuds/aralias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An answer to the question - Do you consider the Auronar humans or aliens?</p>
            </blockquote>





	"She is more human than I am": a discussion of the Auronar and alienness (meta)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [executrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/gifts).



> Written for a prompt by Executrix for the first Blakefest. Originally posted http://aralias.dreamwidth.org/1975809.html#cutid1

Let me begin by saying: 'I consider the Auronar to be basically genetically modified humans who live on a different planet and have done so for some time, and without much contact with Earth-humans'. I will try and present evidence that supports an alternative reading, but that is essentially what I believe and I don't think there's much point pretending that I'll be giving you a totally unbiased set of facts. So - read on with that in mind! 

Let's start with definitions. Most dictionaries seem to have some variation of [this](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/alien) breakdown:

> alien (noun)  
>  1\. a foreigner, especially one who is not a naturalized citizen of the country where he or she is living.  
>  2\. a hypothetical or fictional being from another world (Oxford Dictionaries)

By either definition, Cally is an alien. Case closed, problem solved. She doesn't hail from the same planet as the others, so she is an alien. But they're all in space - so technically they're all aliens. The Blake's 7 annual (1979) claims that Gan hails from the planet Zephron! The Blake's 7 annual is obviously made of lies and very silly pictures, but in the televised episode 'Gold', Dayna is referred to as an alien by a doctor on board the Space Princess. Dayna was born on Earth - she's not even a second-generation immigrant. She could be posing as someone born somewhere else, but her biology would be the same as a human female from the planet Earth. Since that's what she is. I think a doctor would notice that she was an alien who didn't have the same biology as a human. 

What I'm saying is that Blake's 7 uses the term alien fairly liberally. Cally is called an alien but she could be as alien as Dayna, which is to say not very alien. 

What I believe is actually asking however is - do I think, based on the evidence of the show, that Cally is member of an alien _species_? Specifically is she an Earth-style human or is she something else? And where do you draw the line between human and something else? 

There are numerous entities on 'Blake's 7' that are inarguably (at least, I think it's difficult to argue they aren't) sentient alien species i.e. they're not just weird animals. They are basically things that are not humans that could interact with humans in a conference, if they chose to go to a conference. One of the things that's interesting about these other obviously alien sentient alien species... is that they are not widely known about. All of them just come into contact with our heroes (not the wider public), who have never heard of anything like them. So it may be that the term 'alien' is used widely for people like Cally... because there's nothing else (in common knowledge) that is vastly more different than what Blake is, nothing that would be more deserving of the term 'alien'. 

The Liberator is a much better and faster ship than anything most other people have got, so they are more likely to come into contact with weird species that are definitely _alien_ than your average space adventurer. There may be other obvious aliens, but a few from the top of my head:  
i. Zil (Trial)  
ii. The Andromedans (Star One)  
iii. The Ultra? (Ultraworld)

And then arguably: 

iv. The Thaarn (Dawn of the Gods)  
v. The lifeform that possesses Orac (Shadow). We never see it and it has similar-ish type of power to Cally, so we have no proof it isn't just a human-hybrid, but I am tempted to include it because it comes from 'its own universe' and is much more powerful. I think it must be something that developed independently, and that, if I was to write a definition of an alien species, is what I would write at the top of the list:

> alien species (compound noun)  
>  1\. a species that developed independently from Earth humans, and that is probably signficiently biologically different from Earth humans (Aralias)

interestingly the actual definition of species is something like this:

> species (noun)  
>  1\. a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding. The species is the principal natural taxonomic unit, ranking below a genus and denoted by a Latin binomial, e.g. Homo sapiens. (Wikictionary)

But I think we can all agree (to use an example from a different Federation) that Vulcans are a different species to humans, and yet they can demonstrably breed with humans (possibly with genetic assistance, but still. Spock is definitive proof that a human/Vulcan hybrid _is_ possible). So, I think that definition might have to be changed in a theoretical future where aliens exist and medical science has advanced considerably. 

Let's return to my definition instead.

There's no 100% cast-iron proof that Zil's species and the Andromedans developed independently from Earth humans, but I'm willing to assume they did. Zil's people hatch from eggs; we can assume that Blake and co did not based on what we know of humans and from Blake's reaction. The Andromedans can physically change their shape and obviously come from a different universe.

Plus, there's the simple fact that they look really different to your average human.

[ ](http://s1180.photobucket.com/user/aralias2/media/aliens.jpg.html)

(Obviously Blake is not an average anything, but go with it.) That most (un)trustworthy of sources the Blake's 7 annual (1979) also lists a variety of other alien lifeforms that Blake has come across, and they all have extremely different physical characteristics and abilities to humans as we know them.

So - back to Cally. She looks human. That far-more-reliable source 'Blake's 7: The Inside Story' tells me that there were plans to make Cally look more alien:

> by using different-coloured contact lenses when she went into a telepathic trance. Eileen Mair also remembers discussions about making the character an entirely different skin colour. 'We started off with her being pink, then it changed to crimson red. Maybe she was lacking the cholorphyll filter than humans had, or her make-up was genetically different, but they wanted her to have red skin and hair. 
> 
> 'I said we could get red contact lenses made, but it was suggested that the actress would spend thirteen episodes in red contact lenses, not the more comfortable plastic ones we have now and Jan [Chappell] would need time to get used to wearing them. They would have had to be quite big to extend to the iris, and again, I warned them in advance it could be a problem. I'd been to Clulow's to discuss the lenses, and they said she would take about three weeks to get used to them, so that went out of the window.'

Clearly the _intention_ was, at that point, for Cally to be a non-human, but as with everything on the show we can't look just to intention. We have to look at what actually materialised on screen. Some of Blake's lines make him seem like a straight-forward hero, but when read in a cross voice by Gareth Thomas they sound very different. Roj Blake is a combination of the writer's intention, the director's and the actor's (and the costume designer). Similarly, Cally was an alien on paper/in Terry's mind before the series had even begun, but production decisions have instantly rendered her more human because of a lack of contact-lens acclimatisation time. 

Then there's the matter of (simple) time and writing television shows in series as you go along. I don't think it's any disrespect to the writing team to posit that they had no idea that 'Children of Auron' (which strongly pushes the modified-human angle, see below) would exist in two years' time. 

Would this be a more open-and-shut case if Cally had red skin? Arguably no, because obviously different humans have different skin colours to each other, and I like the idea that the conditions of whatever planet her human colony settled on might have caused human settlers to evolve differently based on the light source. As we're in the far future, they might even have purposefully adapted themselves using science (which is what I'll argue in a bit it's clear the Auronar have done), so - they didn't previously have red skin, but they changed themselves because the sun was really bright or something. 

That all seems very sensible, but also - in the context of a scifi show, I would be a lot more willing to say 'yes, Cally is an alien' if she had red skin and red glowing eyes. That's what the show would be trying to tell me with her appearance. Spock has pointy ears and bleeds green blood. He's not human.

Speaking of the Other Federation (and this is a really, really subjective point): Cally is loosely identified as the doctor figure on board the Liberator. She discusses everyone's health at the beginning of 'Horizon' and has clearly been administering cures, and is the one who controls the adrenaline and soma rations. Would Blake put a non-human in charge of administering medicine to a group of humans? Would a non-human volunteer?

When Dr McCoy has to work on Spock he blusters around and says he has no experience and that it might be horribly dangerous. Now, obviously Bones is more of a whinger than stoic Cally/a lot of people, but it's worth noting that of course he would have trained for the species it was likely he would come into contact with most. Cally spent most of her life on a planet that was isolated from the rest of space - she only met Auronar for almost all of her life. Then, admittedly, she worked with a group of (to her) aliens on Saurian Major and maybe she picked up some tips there, but she never seems to find the way that Blake and co are put together to be odd. (Incidentally, I would argue that the population of Spaceworld [the Altas and the slaves] are also humans by any other name - so the Liberator's facilities are set up for humans/are designed to treat humans.)

Admittedly, the exchange I used for the title of this piece possibly contradicts my point:

> BLAKE How is she?  
>  AVON The same. I left the girl with her.  
>  BLAKE Have you run the diagnostic checks again?  
>  AVON Still nothing. There is no physical explanation for her condition unless somehow it's locked up in here [indicates Orac] and I don't see how that can be.  
>  BLAKE She is an alien.  
>  AVON She is more human than I am.  
>  VILA That's not difficult. (Shadow)

But I would argue that this is not conclusive. Blake offers the fact that Cally is an alien only because her current condition (which is - we later discover - the result of a telepathic attack, something he hasn't seen before) isn't explicable to him. Avon's reply is clearly a joke about him being a machine (one of several), but it could also be read as the sort of thing Picard might say - humanity is all about empathising and having feelings etc. And by that account Cally is human (although so is Avon, who is just lying to himself). 

Of course, it could also be read as Avon saying 'I'm an alien too'. I have read some fic along these lines, but not much. (And for the record, I don't think Avon is an alien. I think he's a man who wishes he didn't have emotions and who can largely convince others that he doesn't.) What these jokes _are_ supposed to do is separate Avon (a human from Earth, who finds it difficult to relate to people) and Cally (someone not from Earth)... although they also possibly bring them together. When I asked x_los to read over my essay, she pointed out that Cally and Avon are both versions of Blake's 7's attempt at Spock. Cally is labelled as an alien; Avon is supposedly cool and emotionless. These traits might potentially make it difficult for them to interact with their shipmates, and perhaps their differences are part of the reason why they are paired together in so many fics. Interestingly, one of the major tropes of Avon/Cally fic is that Avon is secretly telepathic too, or has the potential to be. There's no real evidence for this in the show so I probably shouldn't spend too much time talking about it, but if Avon (a human) has the capability for telepathy... then telepathy isn't what makes Cally an alien.

But telepathy _is_ the only thing that _physically_ separates Cally from the rest of the Liberator crew. Interestingly (again, to talk about Star Trek), the Betazoids have almost identical powers and appearances, and are firmly identified as another species, rather than just a kind of human. 

But there are two important differences between Betazoids and Auronar: 

i. Star Trek actively identifies Deanna's species as half Betazoid, half human i.e. half of her is not human and that half is this other species known as Betazoid

(Another point from - Star Trek: TNG is significantly later than B7, and is possibly one of the SF things that help clarify what is human, what is alien. In TOS, Spock is not willing to identify as a 'man', simply 'male', as 'man' is part of hu **man** , whereas it's fairly clear by TNG that man is simply a gender term that transcends species. Whenever a Blake's 7 character talks about 'humans', they could just be talking about 'humanoids', although it begs the question of what 'more human than I am' could possibly mean.)

ii. Betazoid telepathy is a natural ability, like sight 

'Children of Auron' is **very** clear that Auronar telepathy is a result of the cloning procedure. It is not something they have always had, it is not even naturally developed as a result of where they were living. This information about how the Auronar got their ~~trunks~~ telepathy comes directly from what is perhaps the most reliable source we have:

> ORAC: Reproduction by Clinician Franton's method of group cloning has resulted in highly developed psychic faculties, telepathy being the most obvious example. These faculties are, of course, limited to the young since cloning was developed relatively recently. (Children of Auron)

I don't think old fandom really remembers this line (and since they only had limited access to the material and since 'Children of Auron' is largely a big pile of crap, I don't really blame them), because here it is made clear that _most of the people on Cally's planet aren't telepathic_. Only clones are telepathic. And there have only been clones for... let's say 30 years. Possibly less. 

_That said_ , there are plenty of other moments that seem to contradict that idea, and which we might want to put more store by. Here's one from a much better episode:

> HANNA: You can't share someone's madness.  
>  GAN: They can on Auron. Cally told me her people can share any experience. And telepathy means they never have to be alone. Makes them very strong  
>  BEK: Well, when they're together. I mean, what happens when one's isolated? (Shadow)

It is possible to fankwank this away and argue that Cally was talking about her own generation - her own clone group or whatever. Gan doesn't explain, but it also does seem to suggest a world much like the Borg collective where they're all talking to each other all the time. (N.B. Are the Borg an alien species, you might ask. Answer: no. They are a collective, like Star Fleet, made up of a variety of different species.) 

Assuming, however, that 'Children of Auron' is correct, then we have a society that has only recently developed telepathy. Before that they were basically humans (or aliens. Admittedly, they could be a non-telepathic alien species who just happen to look like humans), who just didn't like the Federation. A less reliable source attempts to answer this point a bit earlier in the episode:

> SERVALAN: Their bio-replication plant. Auron's most elegant achievement. Synthesised placenta unit, each capable of gestating a batch of identical siblings.  
>  DERAL: Of - ?  
>  SERVALAN: Foetuses, Deral. Offspring.  
>  DERAL: They look quite human.  
>  SERVALAN: They are. (Children of Auron)

Well, that clears that up. And it's worth noting that Servalan can take advantage of the Auronar cloning facilities, and clone herself. They don't need to make any adjustments (I assume) to account for her alien biology. Interesting thought here as a side point - if Servalan had succeeded and had successfully cloned herself, you'd only have to wait a few years and then you'd get telepathic Servalans. Another thought - is the Blake!clone telepathic? He's not a real clone, and he wasn't developed with Franton's techniques, so maybe not. But it's worth thinking about, isn't it? 

It's ALSO worth noting that, while I was Cmd+F-ing to find the word 'human' in the transcript of 'Children of Auron' to find that Servalan exchange, I also found this from a bit earlier in the episode in which Cally herself does not deny the label of 'human':

> AVON The trouble with the people of Auron is that they all suffer from a superiority complex.  
>  VILA You should get on well with them, then.  
>  AVON Too good to become involved with the rest of humanity.  
>  CALLY That's not true. Just because we happen to be neutral doesn't necessarily -- (Children of Auron)

At this point, I almost want to weigh in and say 'Children of Auron' should have been script-edited a bit better (sorry Chris, but it's true) and also that it's a big pile of crap and I don't want to base all my opinions off it. Although it's also true... that it does attempt to answer all of our questions ;) 

However! There are several other (earlier) episodes from Blake's 7 that deal with the Auronar, although admittedly none so blatantly as the one with the name of the planet in the title. Both of the other Auron-centric episodes ('The Web' and 'Dawn of the Gods') posit a universe where the Auronar have been around long enough to develop their own legends. Some of them are relatively consistent with the human-colonist theory. For example: _"[The Lost] were cast out. Unfit to share the soul of Auronar." (The Web)_

This could have happened a few hundred years ago, and now have passed into 'legend'. Again - this is a bit fanwanky, but whatever. The Lost seem to have telepathic powers of the kind that Cally's people (so 'Children of Auron' would tell us) have only recently developed, but crucially they may have developed them independently as scientists. They say they can take control of Cally because she is their 'daughter' (suggesting an affinity between the old Auronar telepaths and the new Auronar telepaths), but they also take control of Jenna in exactly the same way. I would argue that there is nothing really inconsistent about the later ideas of the Auronar as advanced humans and the Auronar as presented in 'The Web'. 

Indeed, there's even a moment where Blake asks what was the purpose of the Lost's original project, and Novara (the clone person who looks like Paul Mcgann) says: _"Genetic engineering. The main aims were to halt the aging process in **humans.** To find a way to maintain continuous life." (The Web)_

Which again seems pretty conclusive. The Auronar are human, for whatever value you choose to put on human. 

The real problem (for me) is 'Dawn of the Gods', which is almost inescapably clear about the fact that the Auronar developed independently of Earth humans. Cally tells us that _"the Thaarn is as mythical to [the Auronar] as dragons and unicorns are to the people of Earth." (Dawn of the Gods)_ She also tells us a genesis story:

> CALLY : The story goes back to the mists of Time, to the Dawn of the Gods. There were seven gods who discovered the planet Auron, and on it left the first man and woman. A million years went by. The gods returned. They were no older even though a million years had past.  
>  AVON: Not impossible if they had a spaceship capable of traveling at near the speed of light.  
>  CALLY: I did say it was just a legend. The gods returned and were pleased with what they saw, and they bestowed on the people of Auron great gifts: new types of crops, which ended hunger, constant peace --  
>  TARRANT: And telepathy?  
>  CALLY: -- and telepathy was promised. (Dawn of the Gods)

Interestingly telepathy is picked out as something they didn't always have (so it is roughly consistent with 'Children of Auron'! sort of. Good job there, Chris)... but that they always knew that they would get. Even though it didn't evolve naturally - it was just a weird side-effect of a cloning process that even something that has an intellect that rivals Orac's own would have been hard-pressed to predict. Unless the Thaarn _is_ an omniscient god, and admittedly I'm not able to rule out the idea that there are gods in Blake's 7, even though it is a sci-fi show, and science fiction is usually a little bit opposed to magic (despite being housed on the same bookshelves often). Because a lot of weird mystical stuff does happen. But riddle me this - if the Thaarn is all-knowing, how did Cally manage to defeat him with such a pathetic ruse? 

Avon makes the point that beings from across the stars with spaceships might have been the gods, and I think we are asked to accept this as the actual answer. In which case did the Thaarn's people (who _are_ arguably aliens) take some Earth-humans from Earth (a long time - not a million years, let's be fair here) and put them on Auron? Before other humans had space travel? 

It seems _likely_ that they would have been humans from Earth based on this exchange from series 4 episode 'Traitor':

> DAYNA: D'you think I'll pass for a Helot?  
>  AVON: No problem. When Helotrix was first settled, the old Stock Equalization Act was still in force. Every earth race had to be represented.  
>  DAYNA: I didn't know Helots were originally from Earth.  
>  VILA: Everyone came from Earth originally. That's a well-known fact.  
>  SOOLIN: It's a well-known opinion, actually.  
>  TARRANT: Most well known facts are.  
>  AVON: But not in this case. Helotrix is one of the oldest colonies and the first to gain independence from the empire. (Traitor)

Or maybe it was after Earth humans got space travel, and people in Auron's not too distant past made up this legend and began spreading it around. 'Cygnus Alpha' shows us how easy it is for a religion and its associated legends to take hold when you are closed off from the rest of the universe (although Cally's people have demonstrably only been closed off from around the same time as they got cloning, ARGH ARGH)(anyway). 

Maybe Cally's people just happened to have these myths (that could potentially be explained by aliens), just as it would be possible to explain the Bible's genesis story with aliens, if you so wanted to. The Auronar evolved separately, but happen to look very similar and end up at a very similar technological point to the Earth-humans/the Federation by the time of the series. Personally, I don't find that very convincing... 

I find the fake origin story spread around Cally's people like the story of Father Christmas or the tooth fairy more convincing. Even the things that seem to directly contradict the 'humans from Earth' theory can be made to fit (just about. Although that doesn't excuse everything, Chris. Not really.) Whereas it is impossible to ignore the many times Cally and her people are referred to as humans. And humans are from Earth.

> SARKOFF: What do you think of my collection [of Earth artefacts]?  
>  CALLY: Ah, it is most ... ah, impressive.  
>  SARKOFF: "Impressive", only? Ah, but then your people don't originate from Earth, do they?  
>  CALLY: My people are the Auronar.

Oh, fuck you, Sarkoff.


End file.
